


Flesh-ghosts

by Schemilix



Series: Blood and Gold [2]
Category: Final Fantasy Tactics
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 21:19:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schemilix/pseuds/Schemilix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A hole chases me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flesh-ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Attack of the rampant headcanon, once again. Bonus to whoever knows who Molay is named after. Eleth is the name I give Meliadoul and Izlude's mother.

He was a learned man drawn from the path of the savant onto the path of God. Yoked by faith and a desire for change he abandoned his history books and took the robes, guarded the sanctuary, spoke to his flock as children and prayed for the souls of all men.

 As he fought in the war he prayed still, for Ordallian and Ivalician alike, even for the monsters astride their black destriers who cut down civilian and soldier without discrimination.

 When he was struck with fever from the bird’s claws he did not pray, and when he woke he did not pray, because a priest does not pray for himself, he must trust in the Gods. And though they had cast him out in name, in his heart he was still the man who would go a day without sleep to see a man cleansed of guilt.

 To him, he who had seen all a man was capable of thinking in his dark heart, could blame them for nothing, deny them nothing. In sleepless nights he wrestled with the knife or the tinctures as if two men held them. One, the priest, to whom death was an abomination, an unrightful taking of life from a holy world, who believed in the purity of grief.

 The other, half-mad, born wrong and, it seemed, stronger. Sometimes the knife won battles in those days, but it did not win the war. 

  _Sinful Loffrey_ , he thought. With his incomplete soul, _it_  felt. The part of Hume in him that sought love and happiness had festered. He wanted to steal it, or not to have it at all. 

 

 That Loffrey broke vows. He lied. He broke his vows of chastity in the arms of other men; he did it willingly, begging pain for them, absolution. It was not his place to ask the Gods. Maybe they had made him this way, or perhaps his mother had fucked demons. In that, he had no such faith.

 The Templarate took his old office, but left his rosary. A mere token. Sometimes he would pretend it was still his place to take confession, as he knelt by dying men - their coat of arms mattered not - promised them a clean soul and freedom. They trusted the man first with the bandages across his face, and then the healing wounds, and then the fresh scars.

 He wandered aimless, killing because he had been told to, and the blood sluiced away, it seemed, much of what he had claimed of himself as Hume. Compassion could not bear the many tortured souls and bodies, the blankets of crows. Not his feeble-hearted kindness, not the priest in him.

 With numbness came the illusion of wholeness. Soon Loffrey ceased to do things he would have been less proud of, other than what he had been told. It was easier. Because of his talent with the Godblade they gave him the blue robe. They gave him names which would have been complimentary had he any taste for blood or any pride in his talent for shedding it.

 He fucked Molay, and maybe he felt better, and maybe the vague promise that they could leave together deluded him. It seemed as if the end of the war deluded him; it was a war older than him. His world. This he let himself think, and he killed because it was what Molay needed, because it quieted the demons his mother must have fucked to lay by his side.

 And when they buried Molay, Loffrey felt the extent of the wound he had re-opened. He nearly fucked Barich, just to fill a hole or two. Perhaps even the demons his mother had fucked had standards.

 And all the while, he would watch the way Vormav moved with his broad shoulders and his thoughtless baring of his muscled chest to a brother, he would watch him and think what it would feel like to wrap his legs around those hips.

 Her name was Eleth. He respected her as he cursed her, and again he was at war with himself, and the violet robes of office made it even worse. Kill her, said the demon and, what he thought of less of ‘him’ said, no. 

 It had nothing to do with Molay or Vormav or Barich or Eleth. It had everything to do with the wound he had poured the blood of Ordallians into, expecting it not to fester.

 But ah, he was powerful, the demon-self, and Loffrey saw Eleth sicken, saw her weaken over time, saw the frustration of a man who had grown to be - to be a friend. His anguish, his betrayal, and his base, animal need. 

 Claws gripped that need in them both, and nails raked tanned flesh, muscles played against muscles as Loffrey arched underneath the owner of the name he had whispered to himself for years. 

 Before Eleth died he had learned to kiss the back of Vormav’s neck when he wanted him, when his rages were rages and when they were a violent need. How his voice grew hoarse when he was close to climax or cracked as he came, the difference between a threatening snarl and a husky growl next to his torn ear.

 He learned these and, when Eleth died, he knew the sound and the sight of the lion’s heart breaking. When Vormav, as if by some unspoken vow, finally showed Loffrey his tears he stroked his hair and helped him sleep. As Barich grew distant from the black depths of Vormav’s loss, Loffrey accepted, understood. 

 What he did not expect was for the loss of his secrets to lighten him. When he told Vormav how it was to struggle with heights not from fear of falling but from the dreadful wanting to fall, it was as if some black bird took wing from his shoulder. 

 The Lion came and brought with him a name. The demons Loffrey’s mother had fucked were a hole, and Ralseph was the key. He took the ravages of the demon, the rape of his earthly flesh, simply because it was offered. 

 Vormav and he, they made each other bleed, with tooth and nail and knife, until the spill of blood and the spill of seed were indistinguishable, and Loffrey learned the sounds of Vormav’s pain as he once took in the secrets of sinners.

 Often they fought, but others they whispered together, only half-human. 

 ”You sold your soul,” they said and Loffrey, smiling indulgently, would tell them truthfully that he had not. There had never been one to begin with, and now, pressed to that bloodied chest, he was home.


End file.
